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Looking for facts and information? See About the Cryosphere.
Icelights: Answers to your burning questions about ice and climate
What's hot in the news around climate and sea ice and what are scientists talking about now? Read more...
What is the Cryosphere?
When scientists talk about the cryosphere, they mean the places on Earth where water is in its solid form, frozen into ice or snow. Read more ...
The Antarctic atlas consists of 28 digital elevation maps which cover
all of Antarctica north of 72.1 degrees south at a resolution of
three kilometers. Each map contains surface elevations and
coordinates for one atlas page covering 16 degrees of longitude. Data
were acquired by the Geodetic Satellite (GEOSAT) Geodetic Mission
(GM) from March 1985 through September 1986 and are available in both
Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates, and in latitude and longitude coordinates.
Data were mapped using the UTM projection in atlas form to decrease
the distortion that usually occurs at the poles. Many features of the
Antarctic Ice Sheet are shown in more detail than in previous digital elevation models, especially along the margin of the East Antarctic
Ice Sheet. A geostatistical mapping technique (Herzfeld et al. 1993)
improved the accuracy of surface elevations compared to previous
GEOSAT elevation data sets. This atlas will facilitate the monitoring
of changes in surface elevation that could indicate mass changes in
the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
N: -65, S: -72, E: 180, W: -180